The news from Germany is that the coalition led by Angela Merkel is teetering on the brink of collapse as key German minister Horst Seehofer, head of Bavaria’s Christian Social Union, is considering whether to resign.

The straw which is breaking the camel’s back is how to deal with migrants. The CSU wants to turn asylum seekers at the Bavaria frontier if they have already applied for asylum elsewhere.

And that’s the biggest country in Europe, rendered unexpectedly weak because of the migrants crisis.

We already have the refusal by states like Hungary, Slovenia, and others to take on migrants which would have reached other countries in Europe. The Visegrad Group, as it is called, has kept its refusal for a sufficiently long time now that people now see the refusal is a credible one.

The Commission has its problems with Poland as a result of changes introduced by the government with regards to the rule of law.

And that’s just on the North and East of Europe.

To the South, as we all know, the EU is facing the migrants flow. A sort of modus vivendi had been found in the past years but that meant that the flow of migrants on flimsy boats continued and increased but they were saved by NGO ships waiting in international waters and taken usually to Italy which took them all in.

Then there was an election in Italy and the new government is adamant it does not want migrants. The Italian ports were closed to NGO ships and there was a long tug of war between Italy and Malta with a ship, aptly named Lifeline, with over 200 migrants until eight countries accepted to share the migrants between them and the ship could make it to the Maltese Grand Harbour.

Then of course there is all the uncertainty with regards to Brexit with Prime Minister May seemingly unable to carry her MPs with her as the B-day draws near and chaos looms next March.

This is Europe, unfortunately. It is not the Europe we would have liked to be in. All of a sudden, yesterday’s certainties have become today’s uncertainties.

And we have not mentioned the euro so far. Many times in the past years the future of the single currency was put in doubt and many foresaw the demise not just of the currency but of the entire economic structure backing it. That has not happened. Nor has Greece, the weakest Member State been forced out of the Eurozone, as widely predicted. On the contrary, maybe more due to the cyclical nature of finance, countries have returned to growth.

The European Union is an unfinished work: its past is very recent, its ambitions are huge but there is great uncertainty across the continent and inside the union. The EU does not know if its future is as a federal state on the US model or as a collection of sovereign states.

With regards to the crisis which affects us most – migration – the EU has been seeking for a solution for years but has found none. Each time its leaders meet, they end up by finding what they call a definitive solution to the problem but just a few hours later, the nighttime euphoria dissipates and we find ourselves still at sea, along with the migrant boats.

As happens in such vacuums, people, especially the fundamentalists, come up with all sorts of impractical solutions – Send Them Back, Make Europe a Christian continent..

The fact the migrants keep coming is a sure sign that they, at least, believe in Europe. This is similar to EU enlargement. The EU Member States may say they do not want more enlargement but the applicant countries keep pressing on.

Or maybe Europe is seen by the migrants and the would-be migrants as a soft touch. We shall see now, when Europe adopts a harsher regime and when many die in the sea, if an unsoft Europe is a better place for its citizens.